What the Joy of Tech means to me

I have a confession to make.

At the risk of ruining my credibility both as a webcomic specialist and as a long-time member of the Mac community, I have to admit I only discovered the Joy of Tech at the occasion of this Foxtrot strip paying homage to webcomics. “The Ecstasy of Tech? I get the others, but what could this possibly refer to?”

Of course, I found out soon enough, and I’ve been following the Joy of Tech ever since. Through the various news around Apple, or around the tech industry in general, or even completely unrelated matters, they are here to bring a little joy to our lives. I have used one of their comics once while paying homage to Fake Steve, and while I also wrote they come close to, but aren’t, the Penny Arcade of Apple and the Tech industry, that is only because, in my opinion, Nitrozac and Snaggy are too damn nice for their work to be considered satirical…

Nevertheless, the Joy of Tech is performing a duty that I haven’t seen anyone else fulfill: topical humor on Apple and the tech industry in general. On that, they are pretty much the only game in town, which means they get drafted (with little attribution…) whenever media is looking for humoristic commentary, especially of the graphical kind, on tech events. Take, for instance, the time France 5 (French public TV channel) used them to illustrate the acquisition of Instagram (I was the one who tipped off Nitrozac and Snaggy about it). And yet, whenever I stroll back the memory lane and browse old JoT strips, remarkably they hold up much better than, say, Penny Arcade strips do; and to me it’s because they are not just about the immediate event at hand, but more generally tell things about us Mac and tech aficionados.